The Tottens purchased a natural gas-powered generator, which now sits near a deck behind their home. Workers from Roof Diagnostics Inc. in Wall carried it out of a truck Friday morning.

Hooked up to the natural gas line, it’s enough to power their entire house, including the heat, refrigerator, washer, dryer and all the lights in the house.

“You know what? If we would have had it, it would have been a lot more comfortable for my whole family,” Totten said. “Just basic life necessities that we need, like powering our phones so we can call if something happens.”

Freehold Township resident Barbara Nelson didn’t need to worry about it. After losing electricity for five days following Tropical Storm Irene in 2011, she bought a natural gas-powered generator, which was installed this past summer.

An outage in her area of Freehold Township means no electricity to power a water pump to for a well. “There isn’t even the ability to flush the toilet,” she said.

“I was able to help some relatives and friends staying with a house that had heat in it for the first four days after the storm,” Nelson said. “There was certainly security that we would be able to operate the necessities.”

During the early days after superstorm Sandy ravaged New Jersey, gasoline was liquid gold, ambrosia for the electric generator. People lugged gasoline cans and stood in line for fill-ups at the few open stations that had electricity. Many waited only to leave empty-handed when stations ran out of gas. They came back later for more generator juice as power outages lasted for days.

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The extended electric outage gave people the reason to look for options and they’re turning to natural gas.

“I don’t want that to happen anymore,” said Woodbridge police officer Keith Blackston, who plans to buy one for his home in Ocean County. “It just feels like you are powerless. There is nothing you can do and you have to wait for a big company to take care of you.”

It seems there’s a rush on natural gas-powered generators.

Roof Diagnostics, a Wall-based solar installer, is scheduled to install one generator a day through Jan. 20. “We didn’t install generators before Sandy,” said Kelcy Pegler Jr., co-founder. But customers started asking. “We are installing generators now because of the demand.”

Interested? Here are some details about natural-gas powered generators.

The come in sizes from 8 kilowatts to 25 kilowatts, Pegler said.

How big do you need? Figure out what you want to have working during a power outage. “The question is what your needs are and what you are going to put on it,” said Joe Marazzo, vice president of NJR Home Services, a sister company of Wall-based utility New Jersey Natural Gas.

“I would go in and say I just want to power the essentials,” said Michael DiLauro, product information specialist at Consumer Reports. That can mean heat, hot water, sump pump, water pump, refrigerator and some lights.

“Some people want to have a dishwasher and electricity in the bathroom and maybe a room where there is a TV,” he said. “The things like a washer and dryer you can probably hold off on. Even the central air may not be a priority for people.”

Beware of the upsell and only buy the size you need, DiLauro said.

They’re not cheap. Nelson paid about $8,500 for her generator. Marazzo of NJR Home Services said expect to pay about $1,000 per kilowatt.

Part of the installation requires an electrician to connect it to your house properly and a plumber to hook it up to your natural gas service, as well as municipal permits for the work, Pegler said.

And there’s the cost of operating it as well. According to NJR Home Services, a 10- to 12-kilowatt unit costs $30 to $50 a day to run.

Expect to wait to get one for your home. “These contractors have a long queue now,” DiLauro said. “It could take a while for a contractor to even get out to you.”

A little bigger than a central conditioning unit, they can be set up to run automatically when the power goes off. So that means your sump pump will have juice during an outage, even if you’re not home.

Following Sandy, it was pretty easy to find the homes with natural-gas generators. In some cases, they were the ones with the exterior landscape lights on.

“We have had neighbors stop over and look at our system,” Nelson said.

Do you have a consumer problem that needs solving? The Press is on your side! Contact business writer David P. Willis and he will try to help. Reach him at 732-643-4042 or pressonyourside@ njpressmedia.com or facebook.com/dpwillis732..